Trump returns to original racist attack on Mexican immigrants at NRA convention – ThinkProgress

[ad_1]

President Donald Trump harkened back to the racist attack he made on Mexican immigrants on the first day of his campaign in the summer of 2015 during a speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention Friday.

“These countries send up their worst,” Trump said, addressing the crowd assembled in Dallas, Texas. “Remember in my opening speech, I got criticized for it. Remember? Well, guess what. They’re not sending their finest. That I can tell you.” 

In his opening speech nearly three years ago, Trump said Mexico was “not sending their best,” a racist attack that drove his campaign and eventually catapulted him into the White House.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said at the time. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

He resorted to the same dishonest smear Friday.

“We’re getting some real beauties in here,” he said. “But we’re taking MS-13 horrible killer gang members. We’re getting them out because our guys are much tougher than there is not even a little bit of a contest. And that’s the only language they understand. That’s the only language they understand. These are savage killers.”

That immigrants are more violent or commit crimes at a higher rate than non-immigrants is a lie Trump has used repeatedly to back up his racist, anti-immigrant policies.

He defended his original comments in 2015 saying, “What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.”

It’s simply not true.

As The Washington Post wrote at the time, “Data on immigrants and crime are incomplete, but a range of studies show there is no evidence immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, first-generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans.”

Immigration and crime have also had, as the Post noted, inverse trajectories since the 1990s: immigration has risen, while crime as fallen.

Trump’s address to the NRA convention comes just weeks after saying the powerful lobbying organization doesn’t have power over him.

“They [the NRA] have great power over you people,” he told a group of lawmakers gathered at the White House in February. “They have less power over me.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Renewing Bond With the N.R.A., Trump Appeals for Help in the Midterms

[ad_1]

Mr. Duckworth added that the Trump-Pence tag team appearance was encouraging: “It’s very good that they’re supporting the N.R.A.”

The N.R.A. convention has unfolded, so far, as a display of strength and defiance for a group that is battling furious criticism from Democrats in Washington and on the midterm campaign trail. The N.R.A. has faced several policy setbacks on the state level in recent months, as Republican governors in Florida and Vermont signed gun restrictions the group opposed.

Yet if Parkland cast a shadow over the political speeches on Friday, it was a faint one.

The president alluded to the “monstrous attack” in Florida and described having been moved by his meetings with parents and survivors. But he dismissed gun-control proposals as ineffective, and pointed to a funding package for school-safety measures as an alternative.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence again called for allowing certain people to carry firearms on school property. And arguing that gun rights were at stake in November, Mr. Trump invoked foreign cities like Paris and London where firearms are harder to obtain and blamed those gun laws for acts of terrorism.

Mr. Trump mimicked what he described as the unimpeded massacre of unarmed people in a Paris terror attack: “Come over here — boom,” he said, imitating the firing of a gun with his hand.

If patrons had been armed, Mr. Trump said, things might have ended differently.

Mr. Cox, speaking minutes before Mr. Trump, acknowledged the “horrible tragedy” of the Parkland massacre, and emphatically rejected the stricter gun regulations that Democrats and some Republicans have proposed.

Rather than blaming gun owners for mass shootings, Mr. Cox said, Americans should reproach the institutions of government and law enforcement that fail to stop such killings. He criticized the F.B.I. and the Broward County, Fla., sheriff’s department for neglecting to act on repeated signals that Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland gunman, appeared to be violent and dangerous.

“The 5 million law-abiding men and women of the National Rifle Association will not accept one shred of blame for the acts of madmen and the failures of government,” Mr. Cox said.

[ad_2]

Source link